By Clarice Burger
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Rebecca Rose Lobo-Rushin (born October 6, 1973) is an American television basketball analyst and former professional women’s basketball player in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) from 1997 to 2003. Lobo, at 6’4″, played the center position for much of her career. She played college basketball at the University of Connecticut, where she was a member of the team that won the 1995 national championship, going 35–0 on the season in the process. She was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010. In April 2017, she was one of the members of the 2017 class of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, alongside Tracy McGrady and Muffet McGraw.
Lobo was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the youngest daughter of RuthAnn (née Hardy) and Dennis Joseph Lobo. Her father is of Cuban descent, while her mother was of German and Irish heritage. Lobo was raised a Catholic.
Raised in Southwick, Massachusetts, Lobo was the state scoring record-holder with 2,740 points in her high school career for Southwick-Tolland Regional High School in Massachusetts. She held this record for 18 years until it was surpassed by Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir of the new Leadership Charter School in Springfield on January 26, 2009.
More than 100 colleges recruited Lobo, but she chose the University of Connecticut due to its proximity and her belief in its academic excellence. She helped lead the Huskies to the 1995 National Championship with an undefeated 35–0 record. In her senior year, Lobo was the unanimous national player of the year, winning the 1995 Naismith College Player of the Year award, the Wade Trophy, the AP Player of the Year award, the USBWA Player of the Year award, the Honda Sports Award for basketball, and the WBCA Player of the Year award. She was awarded the prestigious Honda-Broderick Cup for 1994–95, presented to the athlete “most deserving of recognition as the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year”. She was a member of the inaugural class of inductees to the University of Connecticut women’s basketball “Huskies of Honor” recognition program. The Women’s Sports Foundation named Lobo the 1995 Sportswoman of the Year (in the team category). She was the first player in the Big East Conference to earn first-team all-American honors for both basketball and academics.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Child Health Day. First proclaimed to be May 1 by President Coolidge in 1928, this national observance has taken place on the first Monday in October since 1960. On Child Health Day, we are encouraged to pay special attention to the physical and mental health and safety of children in the United States. Topics covered on this day include prenatal care, environmental hazards, and adolescent issues.
Native Americans named October’s Moon the Hunter’s Moon because it was the time to hunt in preparation for winter. Other tribes called it the Travel Moon and the Dying Grass Moon. See Almanac.com/moon-october for more information!
Question of the Day
Advice of the Day
Home Hint of the Day
Word of the Day
Puzzle of the Day
My first is company; my second shuns company; my third assembles company; my whole amuses company. (What’s the word? Each clue is a syllable!)
Co-nun-drum
Born
- Joshua Reed Giddings (politician) –
- Jenny Lind (singer) –
- George Westinghouse (Inventor and industrialist who pioneered the use of alternating current electricity; was born in Central Bridge, N.Y.) –
- Helen Wills (tennis player) –
- Carole Lombard (actress) –
- Thor Heyerdahl (ethnologist, leader of Kon Tiki expedition) –
- Shana Alexander (journalist) –
- Elisabeth Shue (actress) –
- Amy Jo Johnson (actress) –
- Rebecca Lobo (basketball player) –
Died
- Baron Lisgar (2nd Canadian Governor General 1869 – 72) –
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British poet laureate) –
- Bette Davis (actress) –
- Eddie Van Halen (musician) –
Events
- Benjamin Hanks applied for a patent for a self-winding clock –
- American Chess Association founded –
- The American Library Association was formed at a convention of librarians at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. –
- The Naval War College founded at Newport, RI –
- Babe Ruth hit 3 home runs in World Series game –
- Premiere of The Jazz Singer, the first feature talking picture, which starred Al Jolson –
- The nuclear submarine U.S.S. Seawolf established an underseas record when it comes to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean near Block Island, after having cruised submerged for 60 days –
- Joseph Charles began 30 years of waving to motorists in Berkeley, CA –
- Greater Winnipeg Floodway (Duff’s Ditch) completed, Manitoba –
- A magnitude 2.0 earthquake registered 15 miles east of Keene, NH –
- Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle, and George E. Smith won the Nobel Prize in physics for their contributions toward fiber optics and digital photography. Kao, of Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in Harlow, UK, and Chinese University of Hong Kong, won half the prize for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication… . [In 1966] he carefully calculated how to transmit light over long distances via optical glass fibers. With a fiber of purest glass it would be possible to transmit light signals over 100 kilometers, compared to only 20 meters for the fibers available in the 1960s. Boyle and Smith, both from Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., shared the other half of the prize for the 1969 invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor… . The CCD is the digital camera’s electronic eye. It revolutionized photography, as light could now be captured electronically instead of on film. –
- 249 combines reaped 200 acres of oats in about 12 minutes, in Dalmeny, Saskatchewan –
- Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur McDonald of Canada won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on neutrinos –
Weather
- The swollen Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers in Pennsylvania were filled with pumpkins that had been washed away from nearby fields. It was thereafter known as “the Pumpkin Flood.” –
- An early storm brought 26 inches of snow to Auburn, New York. All the mountains in western and northern New England also were covered –
- Ucluelet Brynnor Mines, in British Columbia, experienced Canada’s greatest precipitation in a 24-hour period: 489.2 mm. That’s 19.26 inches of rain! –
- A high temperature of 94 degrees F was recorded in Honolulu, Hawaii –
COURTESY www.almanac.com
